Dr. Katz: Horton hears a who’s-who on True Health Coalition

Published 11:07 pm, Sunday, February 15, 2015

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Dr. David Katz.

Dr. David Katz.

Photo: (contributed Photo)

Dr. Katz: Horton hears a who’s-who on True Health Coalition

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It was in 1993, a paper called simply “Actual causes of death in the United States” took the obvious out of the shadows and into a spotlight. Diseases aren’t causes, they are effects. What we really want to know is: what causes the diseases that cause the premature deaths?

The answer in that seminal paper was a list of 10 modifiable factors — most modifiable by each of us individually, all modifiable by us collectively — that together accounted for all of the premature deaths each year in the United States, but for a rounding error. Even more impressive in terms of opportunity, the influence of the factors on that list was incredibly front-loaded. The first three factors — tobacco use, poor diet and lack of physical activity — accounted for 80 percent of the premature deaths all on their own.

Imagine bequeathing to our children and grandchildren a world in which chronic diseases were not getting ever more common and occurring at ever younger age, but in which — 8 times in 10 — didn’t happen at all. The obvious question is: why only imagine it, since we have the knowledge to make it so?

There are, of course, many reasons why what we have known for more than 20 years has not been translated into what we routinely do, and the phenomenal blessings that would result. There are many reasons why knowledge isn’t necessarily power. I will focus on just one for now: only Horton heard the Whos.

In the famous Dr. Seuss story, “Horton Hears a Who,” tiny, human-like creatures called Whos, living on a world the size of a dust speck, are going to be destroyed because no one can hear them. No one except Horton, an elephant with customarily large elephant ears, and correspondingly exceptional auditory acuity. Spoiler alert: the Whos are saved, just before being boiled to extinction in Beezle-Nut oil. What saves them? A chorus.

The Whos, shouting “we are here!” are heard only by Horton. Horton rallies the Whos, with help from the mayor of Whoville, to join their voices into a common chorus. And in a moment of triumph, when the last Who joins his voice, the Whos are heard loud and clear by one and all, and they are saved. Everything changes.

Call me Horton. Or maybe I am a candidate for the mayoralty of Whoville.

There is a massive, amazing, globe-spanning, world-changing consensus among experts in lifestyle medicine and all variations on that theme about the fundamentals necessary to prevent 80 percent of all chronic disease and premature death — but hardly anyone can hear it. The problem in our case is not want of huge ears but a huge amount of competing noise.

It is the job of scientists to ask new questions. But our culture uses the incremental advance of science not to answer new questions, but to question every answer. Why? Money, presumably.

If we, the people, are forever confused about the fundamentals of a health-promoting dietary pattern, there is a new fad diet to sell every day, or at least every week. If there is a never-ending parade of quick-fix diets, there is a never-ending parade of morning show segments and magazine articles about those diets. If every new study is distorted and exaggerated to suggest that it puts everything we thought we knew up until yesterday into question, it propagates perennial doubt, distrust and confusion. Doubt, distrust and confusion make for an excellent sellers’ market.

No one of us, no matter our credentials, credibility or following, can be heard clearly enough above this din of seeming discord to fix it. The proposal, then, is a True Health Coalition — a vast, diverse, global chorus of voices rallying around the affirmation and better use of what we know for sure about lifestyle as medicine. At the tip of that spear puncturing through the din and the discord is a Council of Directors, a global assembly not only representing a who’s who in public health, preventive medicine, fitness, nutrition, health media and more — but a team of apparent rivals into the bargain. A group that comes together to defend the profound importance of common cause on common ground, while allowing still for our very varied devotion to different trails, and particular questions.

I am inviting you to join the coalition. If so inclined, please email Susan Benigas, executive director of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine and manager of this — the GLiMMER Initiative — at sbenigas@lifestylemedicine.org. Just your contact information with “sign me up to the THC” in the subject line, and we will add you to our list-serve and keep you updated.

Only in unity do we have the strength to create the future our kids deserve. If not now, when? If not us, WHO?